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Three weeks into the earnings season for tech stocks, the air on Wall Street is inclement, to say the least. Like the climatological conditions devastating the East Coast, tremendous turmoil is weighing upon tech outfits large and small.

The result is a rather soggy crop of reports, and the mood among investors most foul in response. Some of the reports last week bore evidence of the upheaval in computing that we outlined in this magazine with our cover story two weeks ago ("Bye-Bye, PCs," Oct. 22). But a lot of the actual stock action just showed that tech investors are incredibly skittish these days, likely to punish even winning companies, while bidding up the most mild forms of outperformance.

By my count, half of 98 tech companies reporting this past week missed either revenue estimates, profit estimates or both, while many of those beating estimates did so quite narrowly.

Some of those that at least met profit estimates for the quarter had a lackluster outlook for the current quarter.

Some results were tantalizing, however, as they offer a window into a changing technology landscape. Take chip maker
Cirrus LogicCRUS 0.18072289156626506%Cirrus Logic Inc.U.S.: NasdaqUSD33.26
0.060.18072289156626506%
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:
821304AFTER HOURSUSD33.26
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Volume (Delayed 15m)
:
196660
P/E Ratio
44.945945945945944Market Cap
2082768886.36322
Dividend Yield
N/ARev. per Employee
1079950More quote details and news »CRUSinYour ValueYour ChangeShort position
(CRUS), whose shares have more than doubled this year due to the fact it gets more than two-thirds of its revenue selling audio-processing chips for Apple's iPhone and other gadgets.

Although Cirrus easily beat quarterly revenue and earnings-per-share expectations on Wednesday, and projected the current quarter's revenue to beat as well, the shares fell the next day and closed down 19% for the week.

Analysts debated the fact that the company is seeing prices for its chips come under pressure, perhaps in part to meet the need for Apple to make profits in an environment where Apple has already said it is having to be "aggressive" with the prices it charges consumers. The lesson: Product plans are rapidly changing for Apple and everyone else, as they try to have the latest hot tablet or smartphone.

That's leading to surges in product revenue for suppliers like Cirrus—revenue nearly doubled in the latest quarter—but it's also raising fears the post-PC era is one of diminishing returns from a profit perspective.

Sony6758.TO -0.638529824014951%Sony Corp.Japan: TokyoJPY3190
-20.5-0.638529824014951%
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7731700
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N/AMarket Cap
3754833051375
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N/ARev. per Employee
57802800More quote details and news »6758.TOinYour ValueYour ChangeShort position
(SNE) is the poster child, of course, for what happens when you lose your edge. Thursday morning the company missed third-quarter revenue estimates and offered an unexpected net loss per share, as results deteriorated across pretty much every one of its lines of business, from digital cameras to LCD television sets to mobile game players such as the PSP. Sony cut its outlook for the year's growth and now projects a roughly 1.6% increase in revenue, less than the 5% growth it was previously expecting.

The most unsettling reports, though, seemed to come last week from those outfits dependent on capital spending by phone companies, an area where there has been a growing sense that belts are tightening.
JDS UniphaseJDSU -0.15220700152207%JDS Uniphase Corp.U.S.: NasdaqUSD13.12
-0.02-0.15220700152207%
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1797368AFTER HOURSUSD13.127
0.007000000000001450.053353658536585365%
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:
55899
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N/AMarket Cap
3057480947.80598
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N/ARev. per Employee
340647More quote details and news »JDSUinYour ValueYour ChangeShort position
(JDSU), which sells components used in fiber-optic networks, missed revenue expectations on Tuesday for the quarter, but beat on the bottom line by a few pennies.

More troubling than the mere 1% revenue growth was the fact that management said it didn't anticipate the customary "budget flush" this fall, when phone companies spend what's they have left in the kitty, given an "uncertain climate" of macroeconomic conditions.

On the other hand, even those with decent growth were punished.
Gartnerit -0.4156769596199525%Gartner Inc.U.S.: NYSEUSD83.85
-0.35-0.4156769596199525%
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378270AFTER HOURSUSD83.85
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40.90243902439025Market Cap
7369352400.14037
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N/ARev. per Employee
299118More quote details and news »itinYour ValueYour ChangeShort position
(IT), the consulting firm that advises pretty much every tech company on the planet and tells corporations what to buy, saw 12% revenue growth in the third quarter—nothing to sneeze at when corporate IT spending has been lagging this year. The stock, however, fell more than 8% on Friday when the revenue and earnings per share estimates missed analysts' expectations.

It's a rude reception given Gartner's tech-conference business appears to be doing quite well, probably in part because of all the tumult and change mentioned above.

PERHAPS MORE TELLING than the misses were how the shares surged for even the slightest outperformance, as investors chased any silver lining.

Priceline.comPCLN 1.2454014941339155%Priceline Group Inc.U.S.: NasdaqUSD1164.15
14.321.2454014941339155%
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:
997287AFTER HOURSUSD1164.15
%
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:
13381
P/E Ratio
25.15993084071753Market Cap
59721017140.0937
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N/ARev. per Employee
664722More quote details and news »PCLNinYour ValueYour ChangeShort position
(PCLN), the online travel booker, had been a disappointment when it last reported, back in August, as growth in flights and hotels was hampered by the economic morass in Europe. But it was all smiles Friday morning, as Priceline's shares surged 10% after the company beat revenue estimates by $60 million, a little under 4%.

Chirped Stephen Ju of Credit Suisse, who recommends the shares, the company stands to do OK because "as long as the macroeconomic landscape in Europe does not deteriorate, our estimates have an upward bias." Indeed, if only.

FUNNY ENOUGH, the only thing that really looked like a silver lining was the ray of hope bestowed by Microsoft. Chief executive Steve Ballmer said last week the company's sales of its newest operating system, Windows 8, are running at better than the pace of the prior version since the software was put on sale Oct. 26.

Microsoft shares rose 5% for the week.

Microsoft sold four million copies in the first weekend, it said, and it had already said two weeks ago that "pre-sales" in the September quarter to computer makers were up 40% versus the rate for Windows 7 three years earlier.

Now all the PC makers have to do is sell the hardware for which they bought all those licenses.

We'll see what happens with PC sales, and sales of Microsoft's tablet computer, the Surface, as the holidays unfold. As a product and a technology, Windows 8 has yet to show it's got consumer cachet, but it might yet.

Bear in mind that, at this time in 2009, stripped-down, ultra-cheap computers called netbooks made up 11% of PC sales, giving sales of Windows 7 a nice lift right out of the gate. The netbook has faded from view since then.

This year's netbook is a smartphone or a tablet, a dirt-cheap computing device that is all many people need. And most of those are running something other than Windows.